Funny People

In John Apatow's third movie Funny People the director takes a very mature topic to share with his fan base.
Adam Sandler's character George is diagnosed at the start of the movie with a very severe type of leukemia. This is quite a change from Apatow's usual design. He usually makes the dramatic points at the end. This time he chose to have it run through out the entire movie.
Thats not to say it makes it bad, it just makes it different. And defintely different from his other movies. The majority of the humor comes out from the stankd up bits instead of character interaction. The interaction are used for dramatic purposes.
The characters are some of the most complex seen in a major studio movie in sometime. The main characters of the movie all posess many character flaws. Seth Rogan's character is really the only character who is sympathetic but even he has his flaws. It is tough to feel for any of the characters but maybe thats the most impressive thing of all. Apatow did something that hasn't been seen in a long time, he made all is characters human.
Adam Sandler who hasn't been in an arguably decent movie since 2007 does well in this one. He is able to make fun of himself with all the movies' his character stars in has him being rediculous and doing a silly voice. And it is also good to see that Leslie Mann doesn't just get the roles because she is married to Apatow but because she deserves the roles and this proves it. Her performance whis relatively small still proves to be strong.
Relative because the movie runs long. The total run time is 146 minutes and it runs long. Apatow could have delivered the same message with 30 minutes trimmed off.
There are some problems with the film and the casual film watcher may not enjoy it but the movie is well put together but not a must see. B-